St Helen Bishopsgate is a church that sits just around the corner from the Gherkin. It has a rich history of reconstructions and is very different today to what it was structured originally. Asides from the history, the church holds services on Sunday with up to 1,200 people. There are also regular meetings held during the week with lunchtime and evening sessions.
The church’s name comes from the mother of Constantine, the first Christian Roman Emperor. St Helen’s Church was mentioned in the middle of the 12th century as one of the churches in the jurisdiction of St Paul’s Cathedral.
Around 1210, Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s gave permission to a certain William to establish a nunnery at the north side of the church as well as a new church for nuns to use alongside the old church. The nun’s church named the Nuns’ Quire was 4 foot wider than the old church so the parish church was made longer to match the size of the Nuns’ Quire. That is what gives the present church the double-nave shape it now has. The arches and screen is very much the original of the 1480 build, except the timber is of more recent.
In 1538, the nunnery was surrendered to Henry VIII with the rest of the religious houses in England. By 1543, the Leathersellers’ Company acquired the Covent buildings and the land north of the church. During this time in the 16th century, the monasteries dissolved and alters within removed. There were no seats so everyone is expected to stand, which included the sick and elderly. The last Covent buildings were demolished in 1799 along with the Nuns’ Quire being assimilated into the parish church becoming what the church is now seen as today.
In 1874, St Martin Outwich, founded in the 14th century and rebuilt in 1796, was pulled down. 2 parishes were combined with 18 monuments brought in the church. The Merchant Taylors’ Company became the patron of the United Benefice. In 1922, excavations were carried out into the extensive foundations uncovering traces of the previous apse.
2 bombs within 2 years were set off affecting some of the infrastructure to the interior of the church. In April 10, 1992, an IRA bomb was set off outside the Baltic Exchange at St Mary Axe around 60 yards away, killing 3 people in the church. All the windows were shattered, the roof was lifted, the monuments were badly damaged and the organ was severely damaged. In April 20, 1993, another bomb was set off causing further devastation. These bombs were intended for the City but the church was in the path of its intentions. This proved a challenge for the Rector and Church Wardens, giving them an opportunity to re-arrange the building. Architect Quinlan Terry restored the flooring to its original medieval level. Modern lighting, a public address system were installed as well as a new gallery put into place of the old parish nave and Nuns’ Quire in the west end of the church.
Just above the balcony found just above the entrance inside, has a great view of the length and design of the church. You can definitely see the change of is restructure history as you see no alters, no hues, no pillars, very little stained glass (now only three 19th century windows remain) and the shape that is not based on a traditional church. The balcony also houses the Organ and its case, which were both built by Thomas Griffin in 1743, which was moved back to this original spot after the restructuring of the church following the IRA bombs.
This monument shows Sir John Spencer, his wife and daughter. He was a citizen and cloth worker who was Lord Mayor from 1594 to 1595. It was restored as much as possible to the original colours in 1950. Standing over the railings to the monument, you can see the preceding floor level before the restoration.
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| The covered Baptistry |
In front of the dais is the total immersion baptistery which is covered by wooden planks. Many from different backgrounds (including ones from different religions) have immersed themselves in this pool as they pledged their faith in Jesus Christ.
The Nuns’ Squint are where all the misbehaving nuns or nuns suffering from an infectious disease would be kept for a duration. The slits allow the nuns to gaze into the church to view the high alter which once stood there.
The South Transept of the church was built in 1250 and are divided by two arches of the late 14th century. Following the IRA bomb in 1992, the glass of the Chantry Chapel windows were destroyed. The eastern section used to be called the Chapel of the Holy Ghost. In this section resides brasses etched into the floor with missing inscriptions. A log was made into the parish accounts in 1644 where an engraver was paid £1 and two shillings for “defacing the superstitious inscriptions”. This could be a reason of the prevention of further damage to the church in the midst of the Civil War or that the Church Wardens truly believed that the inscriptions were superstitious. Communion tables, remembering those who sacrificed themselves.
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| Communion Table |
The church holds regular weekly talks, focus groups and studies during some days of the week from lunchtime to afternoon to evening sessions. Services are held on Sunday with a varied mix throughout the whole day. You can visit the church on any day from Monday to Friday morning or you can check the website to find a programme of sessions to attend.
The How-Old.net was unveiled at the BUILD 2015 conference, which uses intelligent API's to discern the age of the users' pictures. It was brought together by Microsoft and Bing under Project Oxford, which showed off one of the many facets of Azure.
The website subtitled "How old do I look?", detects the face and uses a series of algorithm in Face API to find the age and gender to come up with the penultimate or an even accurate age.
I plugged Ed's picture in and came out with - ahem - 37. That's 10 years younger than he was at the time of when this picture was taken. As you can see from the bottom of the picture, it is still a work in progress as they group and analyse the image data. The images are not kept if anyone is worried about that!
It doesn't always going accordingly to plan as they've added 6 years to me at the time of when this was taken. If you're not satisfied with the result, then you get an option to "Get a human opinion" which may be more lenient (or less as I found out in some cases).
So what you have is a "game" where you try and guess the age of others online with you as they guess yours. What I had was a vast range which brought it actually closer to my age which I assume works on the average of what the users feel that my age of the photo is. This time it got me closer to what I was in the photo by 2 years off.
You can give the website a shot yourself and see how it fairs with you or download the app if you have a Windows Phone which offers the same mechanics of the website.
#HowOldRobot
The Tower Bridge Chimney is one of Tower Bridge's most overlooked feature as it is most easily missed when walking by. It's been painted over as to blend in with the colour of the bridge but can be distinguished from the lamps by being much thicker than the lamps with no visible light source atop.
It used to be a former chimney to the Royal Fusilier's Room used by the guards as they stood on duty. It is believed that the use of it ceased when the London Clean Air Act was introduced in Britain in 1956.
St Pancras Church Garden is a hidden and open garden located
near to the City on Pancras Lane. The garden design was created by Studio
Weave.
St Pancras Church used to reside on the very same spot in
the 11th century before it was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.
It was continually used as a burial until 1853 and the church was not rebuilt. Remains
of the old church can still be found under the modern churchyard.
In 1963, an excavation was carried out by the Guildhall
Museum and it appeared that the burials were removed at that point. The site
was left in a derelict condition until the City of London obtained the lease to
it in 2010 to turn it into a public garden.
A design competition was held by the Street Scene of the
City of London, where in which the winning design would be the finalised design
of the garden. Studio Weave won the competition with designs that reflected the
history of the site. The concept was to bring on Romanesque Architecture which
resembled the past church as it raises from the ashes of the ground from where
the church burnt down.
The benches were carved by the City and Guilds of London Art
School students with references to the Romanesque carvings. The stone paving
and wood carving follow the same designs as it takes an asymmetrical and
layered design, arranged in a herringbone design. They are displayed among
buildings and tall trees that brings in a lack of sunlight which adds to the
atmosphere of the garden.
The first screen to come when firing up the Windows 8.1 is the lock screen. The lock screen shows the background image with icons, time and date. The icons show the amount of battery charge left for the device and the internet network connection status and strength. Little thumbnails of apps can be added as notifications which pops up when something comes through for that particular app. It can be further customised to show features from apps such as the Calendar app which can show particular dates/events created in the Calendar to show up on the screen.
To access the customisation of the lock screen, you can open up the charms found on the right side of the screen, click on "Settings" and then "Change PC settings". From here, you can personalise Lock Screen, Account Picture and Password. From this page, click on "PC and devices" and then "Lock Screen" or alternatively click on the image for "Lock Screen" on the default page and this will take you to the page immediately. Also, there is an option to turn on camera from the lock screen with a simple swipe for quick access to it.
There are a number of options to head on to the next screen:
- Desktop computer/laptop - press any key to unlock the screen and proceed either to the password screen or start screen/desktop
- Touch-screen devices - Flick the screen upwards from the bottom or middle of the screen and proceed either to the password screen or start screen/desktop
Moreover, there are additional ways of logging in when prompted for the password:
- Password - good ol' password login
- Picture Password - using a picture you've chosen and signs in with a series of swipes
- PIN - Sign in with a 4-digit number
- Password policy - turn on or off password required to login from sleep
This can changed through the same way as before, open up "PC settings", head over to "Accounts" and choose "Sign-in options". Personally I use picture password as it never ceases to be a fun way to sign-in.
On the password screen, you can switch between password and the picture password/PIN, in case you have problems signing in with the latter options. On the password screen, you can access the Ease of Access functions for those who require special requirements. This also the page where you can shutdown, restart or put your system to sleepy, which I have no real for at the moment but it helps to have it as a precaution!
The Ommatidium is a permanent art installation created by designer Samuel Wilkinson and Beau Lotto, which is homed on Old Street at the Hoxton and Shoreditch end. It is partnered with the “immersive messaging” app Traces and celebrates the tech city that is London playing between the physical and the digital.
The installation is made up of 1,500 glass crystal prisms which refracts sunlight creating a prismatic effect of the colours of the rainbow as light passes through. At night, it is lit by low energy LED lights. It makes use of the “geosocial platform” Traces app which, instead of sending to a person, sends messages and information to a location, and in this case, the Ommatidium.
#Ommatidium
Welcome to Tech Talk which will be a space for me to talk tech. So I will be starting it off by looking back at Windows 8 and its improvement in Windows 8.1. The operating system was launched three years after the success of Windows 7 and in many ways 8 succeeded the predecessor, but it did not quite translate it over to the users, while others found solace when using devices with a touch screen.
Windows 8 opened a whole new world to tablets/hybrids and computers with touch screen as the operating system added in new functions and capabilities for such devices making it more universally adaptable to a variety of devices. The touch reaches the very edges of the screen. It also works well with the traditional manoeuvres of a keyboard and mouse.
It is also the first operating system that allows it to be used on processors other than ones by Intel or AMD (x86 architecture) as it employs the use of ARM processors. ARM is used in many smartphones and mobile devices, which offer simplistic design using power at a low-level.
The minimum system specifications required to run the operating system are as follows:
- 1 GHz or faster processor
- 1 GB RAM (32-bit) or 2GB RAM (64-bit)
- 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
- DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 10 or higher driver
Windows 8 is much faster in performance as it was designed to be much more slimmer and sleeker than its processor allowing it to work on a wide range of devices. The core processor is much higher in Windows 8 than Windows 7, which gave it a faster start up and shutdown.
With a new design and faster response comes a plethora of new features and enhanced capabilities of the old. These new changes include:
- New lock screen
- New ways to login i.e. PIN or picture password
- Start screen
- Windows Stores and Apps
- Microsoft account integration
Some embraced the new changes that Windows 8 brought but a lot did not take to it with some actually preferring Windows 7 over 8. Microsoft aimed to address this much further down the line by sticking to it firmly and adding new changes which will soon become known as Windows 8.1. This changes aimed to even out the playing field on all levels. The changes include adding in a start button to bring a sense of nostalgia for people missing it and using the same background for both the start screen and desktop. Improvements were added to existing features such as a new facelift for thru Windows Store, able to change the size of tiles, boot directly to the desktop and new additional touch gestures.
I'm going to do a full run of Windows 8.1 of the new features and capabilities. Of course, I will also do a full run through Windows 10 and the hark back it does in bringing together the best of both worlds.
#Windows8
In one of London’s oldest parts is Plantation Lane and now
features an art installation, which was installed in 2005.
Scrawled against the floor is texts that run across history
making use of light, language and space. It is brought together through a
collaborative project between Arup Associates and Simon Patterson.
The art installation features laser-cut letterings as it lines up along paving slits which forms a journey conjoining the texts of history as it flows and curves. The work also features a light installation of a wall of the moon surface measuring 41 metres long and 6 metres high. The work to different points of history from the Battle of Hastings to the London Blitz.
#PlantationLane
Do you see it? No? Take a closer look… it’s there in the middle… Its London’s smallest sculpture as it resides on Philpopt Lane as the Philpot Lane Mice. The sculpture features mice fighting over a piece of cheese.
The story behind it is said to honour a 19th century worker who was working atop the soaring heights of the Monument. Found that his lunch was missing, he blamed it on another worker which resulted in a fisticuff between them. Unfortunately, both workers tragically fell to their deaths. Further mysterious disappearances of lunches resulted in the unveiling of the true culprits, which were found to be mice!
It’s really hard to find so putting on your eagle eyes are most definitely a must. Another thing worth checking out next door is the Sky Garden on the top level of the Walkie-Talkie building which is required to be pre-booked and is free to access as well as the alleyway Plantation Lane.
